]]>Virtualization and the cloud have enabled organizations to process staggering amounts of data by unbuckling server-side limitations. Today, companies handle billions of pieces of data per day, intensifying the challenge of analyzing that data. Experts predict organizations that integrate data analytics technologies with business processes and enterprise architectures will gain a competitive advantage in 2016 through the use of statistics-backed user and market information.

“IT leaders and SOA influencers are using data that they own and can acquire as a means to develop new revenue streams,” said Good Data CEO and founder Roman Stanek. “This data is a blend of homegrown, CRM, social, SaaS and IoT. The analytics used to derive monetary value from this blend will become a new digital currency.”

But to bankroll this digital currency, organizations have to overcome the big challenges, according to Rob Terpilowski, software architect at transportation logistics firm, Lynden Inc.

“It is not only the handling of this amount of data that will continue to be an important trend this year, but [also] the analysis of this data and the ability to ask questions of and find patterns in this data,” said Terpilowski.

Data analytics can be very useful in business processes, according to Stanek, who proposes that adopting metrics into BPM can result in better decision making. Determining how to integrate data analytics into BPM, however, isn’t an easy process, and organizations that wish to do this successfully should study the approaches that can help make good use of data analytics and glean meaningful information from data tools.

To exploit the opportunities in data analytics, hiring or using consulting data scientists may be the answer for businesses. Bringing data scientists into the software development lifecycle will make it easier to take advantage of new architectures for optimization and machine learning from vendors like Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, said Staten.

For developers who need to embed data analytics into the applications they build, the R and Python programming languages offer some notable advantages. R is an open-source language tuned for predictive analytics and data visualization. Python is a general purpose language, but has strong functionality for collecting and analyzing data. Another useful language may be Julia, a technical computing language which isn’t used as widely for data analytics as R, but whose proponents say it offers more efficient data processing.

Taking app analytics to the cloud

As vendors clamor for more cloud applications, enterprise architects should develop plans to smooth this transition. Kurt Milne, vice president of product marketing at the cloud management firm CliQr, points to companies “replacing customer managed service tiers by adopting cloud provider services” as a major SOA trend this year.

The use of application-centric automation tools can help with this effort, as it can enable services to be delivered quickly without the DevOps learning curve typically required with traditional methods, Milne said. For example, AWS DynamoDB and RDS are becoming popular methods for businesses to easily provision services to circumvent the wait times associated with manual processes for engaging IT resources.

“These tools give the benefits of fast and automated deployment, and they also facilitate application migration between clouds, which avoids cloud vendor lock-in,” Milne said.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/soa-talk/mix-data-analytics-bpm-soa/feed/0The culture of microservices: Conway’s law and two pizza boxeshttp://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/The-culture-of-microservices-Conways-law-and-two-pizza-boxes
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/The-culture-of-microservices-Conways-law-and-two-pizza-boxesWed, 22 Jul 2015 15:58:25 +0000http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/The-culture-of-microservices-Conways-law-and-two-pizza-boxesThe idea of microservices appears to be quickly gaining fame among today’s enterprises, however some IT experts warn that organizations may not be “culturally” prepared to leverage this new paradigm in a way that is beneficial for their business. “People are asking about it a lot. They’re interested in what it is and how it’s helping...

“People are asking about it a lot. They’re interested in what it is and how it’s helping companies become successful,” says Christian Posta, Principal Middleware Specialist/Architect at Red Hat and committer to the Apache Software Foundation. “But since it’s much more, at least in my opinion, about how an organization structures itself, it’s going to be difficult for some of these large enterprises that are structured the way that they are to adopt that architecture and really take it to its full extent. I think that’s the big challenge.”

But why is this organizational structure so important when it comes to delivering microservices? And what does it take to establish the “culture” needed to realistically adopt this approach to application development?

Arun Gupta, director of technical marketing and developer advocacy at Red Hat, says that this cultural requirement can be directly linked to Conway’s Law, a technology-based “philosophy” which claims that an organization’s application structure is going to be a very close mimic of their IT organizational structure.

“If your organizational structure is one UI team, one database team, one middle-tier team, etc., your application code will start showing those layers,” says Gupta. “[These layers] might not work well with each other, and they will have to have a ‘workaround’ to work with the other layers.”

“With microservice,” he adds, “because we are following mostly the domain-driven approach, the idea is to have a cross-functional team.”

So how do you create these types of microservice-friendly teams? The first step, says Posta, is to think small and take what Amazon calls the “two-pizza box mentality” – as in, create smaller, multi-functional teams that are no bigger than what two pizzas can feed.

“You need small teams that are focused on their one service or set of services – and that team is typically made up of both developers and operations-type people, or at least developers who do a lot of operations-type stuff,” says Posta. “And to me, that’s the pinnacle of what people want when they talk about DevOps.”

This may be a sign you have too many developers on your team.

But not only do you need the right team structure, says Posta – the quality of these team members matters too. Do you have people do that are willing to learn? Are they interested in building a better product? Do you have developers that understand the business side of things as well?
This is a challenge for many larger enterprises, Posta believes, where business-decision makers may not see technology as core part of their business’s ability to innovate. However, he stresses that maintaining this focus is one of the three major qualifications for success with microservices, alongside having the right team structure and creating a culture for rapid innovation.

Gupta stresses that establishing this DevOps culture should absolutely be the first step an organization takes in their microservices journey, even if it doesn’t necessarily pan out. Establishing these strong DevOps practices will still benefit your organization.

“Today it’s microservices…tomorrow it’s going to be picaservices or nanoservices,” says Gupta. “So look at DevOps as the first, because that’s in general good. Whether you’re doing microservices, monolith, or whatever it is that you’re doing…that organizational alignment is one of the biggest challenges I’m seeing.”

Have you recently made, or do you plan to make, changes in your IT organizational structure in order to prepare for microservices? Tell us about your experiences with your comments.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/soa-talk/the-cultural-shift-of-microservices-conways-law-and-two-pizza-boxes/feed/0The I in BPMhttp://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/The-I-in-BPM
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/The-I-in-BPMTue, 02 Jun 2015 14:06:49 +0000http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/The-I-in-BPMSomething old, business process man­agement, has been made new again by the addi­tion of a lowercase i. This three-part guide shows how and why adding cloud services and analytics to BPM will make it intelligent BPM, a must-have technology for many businesses. Why? iBPM promises to smooth business pro­cess workflow in hybrid computing settings where...

]]>Something old, business process man­agement, has been made new again by the addi­tion of a lowercase i. This three-part guide shows how and why adding cloud services and analytics to BPM will make it intelligent BPM, a must-have technology for many businesses. Why? iBPM promises to smooth business pro­cess workflow in hybrid computing settings where business logic and data run across many platforms.

Veteran IT reporters Christine Parizo and George Lawton explore the evolution of iBPM and its many uses for businesses. Parizo explains why iBPM is poised for widespread adoption and describes how it’s already being used. Lawton looks into iBPM’s backstory and many vendors’ plans for iBPM products.

As iBPM, BPM rises from the hype ashes, where it resided with SOA for a spell, say industry watchers in George Lawton’s article on the emergence of new cloud iBPM products. As recently as last year, IT pundits proclaimed that both SOA and BPM would be killed off by cloud. Instead, both technologies are viable today because they leverage services in business, on-premises, cloud and hybrid cloud environments to support business needs.

Finally, i buyers beware. That lowercase i is a popular way to hype a technology enhance­ment, but the i can stand for many things. The fad kicked into warp drive with Apple’s iMac, or Internet Mac, and has continued to thrive even though Internet connectivity is ubiquitous across devices today. The little i stands for intelligent in iBPM, for integration in iPaaS or IBM’s iSeries, for invisible in iMail and so on. The fad won’t stop, even though iWant it to.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/soa-talk/the-i-in-bpm/feed/0What will be big with SOA in 2015?http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/What-will-be-big-with-SOA-in-2015
http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/What-will-be-big-with-SOA-in-2015Wed, 31 Dec 2014 17:45:09 +0000http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/blog/SOA-Talk/What-will-be-big-with-SOA-in-2015With 2014 coming to an end, we close the door on an eventful year. Technologies such as Hadoop, Docker and microservices made their way into our everyday lexicon. Some tried and true predictions held on for another year. For example, in an interview with Forrester’s principal analyst Brian Hopkins at the end of 2013 he...

]]>With 2014 coming to an end, we close the door on an eventful year. Technologies such as Hadoop, Docker and microservices made their way into our everyday lexicon. Some tried and true predictions held on for another year.

For example, in an interview with Forrester’s principal analyst Brian Hopkins at the end of 2013 he asserted that mobile applications should make waves in 2014. “Everybody is suddenly realizing that the platform is not the differentiator, it’s the apps,” he said.

In many ways, Hopkins’ prediction was correct. Over the course of the year, mobile application development proved to be important, especially in corporate environments. Several enterprise architects and developers shared with SearchSOA.com how they selected tools to help them gain an edge in the mobile sphere.

Indeed, it appears that mobile technology, big data and the Internet of Things, took the spotlight in 2014 – a position they will likely hold for quite some time. Some experts assert that SOA should have been right up there in the limelight too, but ended up in the wings. In an interview with Christine Parizo, 451 Research’s Carl Lehman said, “SOA is a wallflower … It was brought to the dance, but it’s not on the dance floor.”

Poor SOA. Will 2015 be the year SOA is crowned king?

Given what some industry insiders recently said, it doesn’t sound like SOA per se is going to be voted most popular — yet again. It appears that flashy mobile technology and the cloud will be most thought of, even though SOA may be the true underpinning of how everything is synched together.

Although the term mircorservices may be relatively new, some experts, like Gartner vice president and senior analyst Anne Thomas, believe it’s going to become increasingly prevalent. “I think that a small number of people, maybe 10% of organizations, will start trying to play with microservices and bounded context during the next year,” she said.

In fact, Thomas said she feels that microservices really is just SOA, but under a different name. So maybe SOA really will edge upwards in popularity, just under a different guise.

What are your SOA trend predictions for 2015? What do you think should have happened in 2014 that didn’t?